This year Tallinn Open probably will a very strong gomoku tournament.
At least some Russian squad will come (including Denis Osipov).
Bano said that he will think about a participation too, so...
This is the topic about Tallinn Open in our vk group (in Russian)
https://vk.com/topic-19499145_39201711

A couple of days ago I talked with Latvian gomoku player Matīss Riherts, and he revealed the truth about the gomoku tournament held in Estonia last week.

We know that Ilya Katsev finished first and that Ants Soosyrv finished second, but it turns out that Matiss basically outplayed each of them in the direct encounters - he had a win in each of these two games! It is only inexplicable bad luck that resulted in Matiss missing these wins and losing the games.

If Matiss had won these two games, he would have won the tournament.

Let us have a look at the game against Ilya.

Here is the game, up to the point Matiss recalled: g6i8e3g5j8e6h5f7j7i6i7g8h9h7f9j9k7l7i9h10j6

The above string is simply the move sequence, which you can use to conveniently load the game in Yixin as follows: In Yixin's command line, type the command putpos, add a space, insert the above string, and press Enter.

Ilya put the opening, Matiss added two stones, and Ilya chose white.

After move 21, white has no defence. That is, Matiss had a sure win at this point, but missed it later. The game went on to a mutual time trouble, where Ilya was luckier.

And here is the game of Matiss against Ants: h8h7h12f10e9e10g10h11i11j10g8f8i10f11f9h9g9g11i12i13j12k12d11d9g12f12j8i8g6g7i7j6e6h6i5e13h10k13h13k10k11l11j9m10j13l9l10m8m9n8n7k6i6

The fact that Matiss basically outplayed both Ilya and Ants is not surprising to me. Matiss frequently plays on Kurnik and is well known there as connect555 and ok366. On Kurnik, Matiss' rating is usually considerably higher than that of Ilya: Matiss usually has a red rating (i.e., 2100 or higher), while Ilya's rating is usually ~1800. I have never seen Ilya under a red nickname. In the WBC 2018, Matiss finished in the top 16, whereas no Russian except Denis Osipov was able to finish in the top 16 in the WBC 2018 or WBC 2017.

So perhaps it is Matiss who was the most skilled participant of the Estonian tournament held last week. Bad luck can happen to everyone. I hope that Matiss will keep his head high and shine in future live tournaments.

It is also very disappointing that the games were not recorded on protocols. The tournament photos posted by Ilya clearly show that the players did not bother using any protocols. On the tables, there were only boards, clocks, and stones.

Each gomoku game is a piece of art and is created by intellectual efforts. It is just unthinkable how one can so easily let pieces of art go down the drain.

Some people may argue that the games with a short time control are unworthy to record because of their quality, but I find such an argument amusing. We routinely recorded matches of the WBC 2018, where the time control was even much shorter, 1+0, and published many these videos on the tournament website: https://sites.google.com/site/worldblitzcup2018/full-match-videos . And they were watched many times. My Youtube channel has about 5500 views or 18700 minutes of watch time, and the overwhelming part of this attention was given to videos with one-minute gomoku games, mainly WBC videos. People are interested.

Gomoku games with any time control are worth recording, because people are curious to see how players make decisions in games, are curious to compare themselves with others, and want to learn.

Specifically games with a short time control are especially attractive in that no large amount of calculations is required to understand the decisions of the players. In such games, you can see habits, inclinations, and philosophies of the players by the naked eye. You can see their "evaluation functions," so to speak. And you can learn from that - perhaps even more effectively in some aspects than, e.g., from correspondence games, which require a lot of analysis in order to understand what is going on.

The notion that games with a short time control are not indicative of true gomoku skills is laughable. The top one-minute gomoku players are very successful live gomoku players. The current world gomoku champion and the current WBC holder are one and the same person.

After a live tournament is completed, many players in the gomoku community are curious to have a look at how the games went, and it is so disappointing to see only results and no game records.

After all, each gomoku game is a part of the gomoku history, and I want to show you a very illustrative example.

We well know Polish talented gomoku star Kamil Pawela, who won the bronze medal of the Polish championship 2006 and shined in the WBC 2018, and, of course, we well know Zoltán László, the current world champion, but do you know they played a rated live game against each other?

This happened almost a decade ago, in the Polish Open 2009, where the time control was 20+0, without any Fischer increment.

And, needless to say, each game record is a contribution to the game database, in which we can search for games with specific opening patterns.

Sometimes people record the games, but fail to make the game records available on gomokuworld.com. An example is this tournament: http://gomokuworld.com/tournaments/195 . The tournament was organised in 2017 in Tyumen by Mikhail Lomakin and was played with the time control 45+15. The tournament participants were well-known players - Lomakin himself, Andrey Litvinenko, Ilya Katsev, Dmitry Pushkarev, Anatoly Smirnov, and Vladimir Dvoeglazov. Photos of the tournaments clearly show that the games were recorded, yet no game records from that tournament are available on gomokuworld.com despite that one-and-a-half years have elapsed since the tournament.

Failing to record games can also be seen as a kind of free riding: People enjoy looking at games of others, but do not make the effort to show own games. People also can use games of others in order to prepare against particular opponents, but hide own games and thereby make it difficult to prepare against themselves.

What can we do about not recording games?

We can get a good idea by looking at Kurnik, the most popular playing website: Each rated game there is recorded, so it may be a good idea to do the same in live gomoku - that is, to introduce the condition that only those games can be rated that not only satisfy the time control requirement (currently a minimum of 20 min per player) and the opening rule requirement (swap2) but also are recorded and made available on gomokuworld.com.

It really takes very little to record games. Just print out protocols and mark your moves. As simple as that.

I believe that if someone wants to earn rating points, he should have the courtesy of showing the community how he earns them!

We know that Ilya Katsev finished first and that Ants Soosyrv finished second, but it turns out that Matiss basically outplayed each of them in the direct encounters - he had a win in each of these two games! It is only inexplicable bad luck that resulted in Matiss missing these wins and losing the games.

Yes, I can perfectly understand that, but I think that players still could record moves in such games until, say, 3 minutes are left. In the Polish championship 2017, Alice and Vince stopped recording moves in their game when Vince had too little time left. Such an approach at least saves the most interesting, thoughtfully played part of the game, whereas moves made in a mutual time trouble are indeed of relatively little interest.

Chaosu napisał/a:

sandra113 napisał/a:

It is just unthinkable how one can so easily let pieces of art go down the drain.

. . .Ja nie mam żadnego problemu z myśleniem o tym.

I guess you simply take gomoku very lightly Not judging you, just establishing a link

We well know that in mind sports, championship titles are often fought for in direct title matches. This tradition exists, for example, in chess, where there have been epic matches between Karpov and Kasparov, between Fischer and Spassky, and between Alekhin and Capablanca, and the same tradition is there in draughts, where the world title match is held every two years. In renju the strongest Japanese player and the strongest Taiwanese player are determined in the respective Meijin matches, and the same is true for gomoku for the country leading in terms of the individual world titles - this year we witnessed a thrilling Hungarian Meijin match between Gergő Tóth and Zoltán László.

Now this excellent tradition has reached Russia, and today an important Russian live gomoku match kicks off - Denis Osipov (also known as Nirvana) plays against Mikhail Lomakin (also known as Mikle) in Moscow. The match consists of four games with the time control 120+30. The match venue is the Esenin library in Moscow (Moscow City Library 186), and everyone who wants to attend the match is cordially invited.

So what is at stake and why Osipov and Lomakin?

It is not a big secret that currently the Russian gomoku community is de facto divided to two parts virtually isolated from each other in terms of live games - the European part and the Siberian part, each of them having its own rich history of tournaments and achievements, both live and online. The Siberians, for example, won the Euroleague, and not only once, and their leader Mikhail Lomakin performed very well in the European team gomoku championship 2014 in Prague, earning 11.5 points in 14 games. The European part of the Russian gomoku community well represented Russia in the last world team gomoku championship, winning the gold, and organises the annual Russian gomoku championship, but the Siberians have been fully ignoring it since a few years ago.

The strongest player of the European part of the Russian gomoku community currently is Denis Osipov, both formally and in terms of common sense. It is him who won the last Russian championship organised by the European part of the Russian gomoku community. It is him who has the highest Gomokuworld rating among all Russian players. Ir is him who captained the victorious Russian team that won the gold of the last world team championship. It is him who owns the highest achievement among all Russians in the World Blitz Cup, de facto the online world championship in one-minute gomoku - he shared the 5th and 6th places in 2018, while no other Russian was able to finish in the top 16 in 2017 or 2018.

In the Siberian part of the Russian gomoku community, two players stand out, Mikhail Lomakin and Andrey Litvinenko, but it is Mikhail who won the Tyumen Meijin match played between them in 2015 ( http://gomokuworld.com/site/tournaments/149 ). Mikhail also won the last rated Siberian tournament ( http://gomokuworld.com/site/tournaments/202 ) and is the undisputed inspirational and organisational leader of the Siberian players. Also, the total score between Mikhail and Andrey in the games shown on Gomokuworld is 10.5-7.5 in Mikhail's favour.

Denis and Mikhail also belong to different generations of players. Mikhail is the USSR champion of 1988, while Denis is a young player who came from the online world.

Thus the upcoming match will be not only a battle between the European and Siberian parts of the Russian gomoku community, but also a clash between two different gomoku philosophies as well as a fight between two generations. The match will set a background for many future discussions in the Russian gomoku community about comparing the European and Siberian parts of the Russian gomoku community as well as about gomoku philosophies, thereby affecting the evolution of Russian gomoku. After all, since the Siberians do not participate in the Russian championship organised by the European part of the Russian gomoku community, the upcoming match can be regarded as unofficial determination of the strongest Russian gomoku player as both players emerged as the strongest players of their respective geographical parts.

The preliminary schedule of the match is as follows, with all times being Warsaw times:
Sat 3 Nov, 9:00: Two games
Sun 4 Nov, ~10:00: Either one game or two games
Mon 5 Nov, ~8:00: One game if the match is not completed by the end of Sunday

For those who are lucky to be in Moscow this weekend and want to attend the match, here is the match venue address:
The Esenin Library (Moscow Librabry 186)
Krzhizhanovskogo street, House 15, Building 5

If the match is not completed by the end of Sunday, then the remaining game will be played at a different Moscow location, which is yet to be announced.